1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for identifying performance problems in an application.
2. Description of the Related Art
Performance analysis tools are employed to work with large volumes of highly complex data of varying types and varying levels of granularity. In analyzing the performance of an application, the performance is measured, constraints to the level of performance achieved are found, and those effects are eliminated and reduced. Thereafter, the performance may then be measured again with the changes to the application. Many tools have been developed to assist in dealing with the challenges in analyzing the performance of applications. These tools include system and application profilers, such as tprof, which is a profiling application available from International Business Machines Corporation. Tprof is a time-based profiling technique in which a separate hardware time-based interrupt is used to gather data. This time-based interrupt is used for each processor in a system. The use of this type of performance tool as well as other performance tools are employed when developing programs. These tools also may be used to diagnose problems in the field after an application has been released for use. This type of diagnosis may be expensive because of the time needed by a performance analyst to visit a site and gather data for analysis. Further, this type of process may be difficult to implement if a user or customer is required to follow special procedures to gather data for the analyst. Further, identifying the cause of a performance problem may be difficult for an application in actual use because difficulties may occur in repeating the problem.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for identifying performance problems in applications.